Dell Inspiron Mini 10 Available at Tesco for £349.00: Perfect Mini but slow

Updates: There are many reports at MyDellmini after ordering this Mini 10 Netbook, the recipients got Mini 9 rahter than mnini 10.

Dell Inspiron Mini 10 that was shown at CES 2009 is available for purchase at Tesco website with the price of tag of 349 Euro or $480 USD. The Mini 10 is trendier than Mini 9 and Mini 12. However, unlike Mini 9 and like Mini 12 it comes with the slow processor of Intel Z520 at 1.33GHz. The netbook is more compact that Mini 12.

Mini 10 at this website comes with a multi touch track pad-something similar the one you can find on MacBook laptops but with more limited actions such as responding to 3- finger gestures, and 10-inch WSVGA display.

The netbook features Z520 at 1.33GHz atom CPU, 1GB of RAM, 160GB (5400 rpm) HDD, 802.11b/g Wireless, Bluetooth, 10/100 LAN RJ 45, built-in webcam, 3USB port, Media Card reader, Windows XP,and Microsoft Works 9.0.

However, the higher models can come with faster 1.6GHz CPU, built-in GPS, and optional WWAN.

Image: courtesy of Engadget

OLPC 2.0: The next phase of One Laptop Per Child

Despite laying off half of its employee’s and losing some of its sponsors, OLPC founder, Nicholas Negroponte, did not give up his dream. OLPC reorganized its operation and Negroponte and Charles Kane, President and CEO, One Laptop Per Child is planning to release OLPC 2.0 a new netbook that would be smaller, more efficient and consume low power.

On January 1, 2009, Negroponte announced that OLPC is going to lay off 50% of its employees. The main reason behind this is economic recession. The G1G1 program in which the company heavily invested end up in huge loss and due to financial difficulties of the companies, major sponsors like Nortel, EBay, SES, pulled out of the program. Due to this financial hardship they had the organization had to bring down expense of its OLPCs below $500,000. Now, the company has reorganized its goal. It is now going to focus on Middle East and Africa. In Latin America, OLPC observed great success especially Peru and Uruguay. OLPC has decided to start a separate office in these two regions. In addition, the company will start producing Generation 2.0, the next generation of OLPC netbook. OLPC will also a cost free connectivity program. It will also handover the development of its Sugar Operating System to the open source community.

Linux Moblin Running on Samsung NC10: A Perfect OS for Netbooks

One big problem existed with all Linux distributions is their installing on computers. Unlike automatic process of Installing Windows operating systems that you will just need to run one CD and let it be installed by itself, for installing one of the popular Linux distribution like Red Hat Enterprise Linux, you have to use a CD or DVD sets with the vital packages on the first disc and less important packages on later ones. The second problem is related to working with Linux OS. it is somehow needed to know some commands for arranging the same freedom that you get while using one of Microsoft Windows OS.

Linux Moblin v2 Core Alpha platform based-on a Fedora kernel has just been released for Atom-based netbooks by Intel. The goal of making this OS was to keep up the price of netbooks low, meanwhile to bring fast Boot up and performance and smooth running of network connectivity on these slow netbooks.

Laptop magazine folk installed this initial just-released Moblin OS ( without any extra software tool and packages) on a Samsung NC10 through a USB drive and boot it up and run off it of the LiveUSB, They experienced fast and smooth boot and operation. This is very important feature as Netbooks come with slow guts like slow low-powered Atom CPU and 512MB or 1GB of Ram as default. So, you have read manytimes that when netbooks boot up Vista or Windows XP, they have to take 40sec up to 1 minute.

But, if you watch the Video made by laptop magazine folk, you will see that the NC10 netbook takes only few seconds to boot up Moblin through the USB driver. The good part is that the OS uses very little memory.

Also, they found out that Wi-Fi, LAN connectivity and trackpad and mouse worked properly without any tweaking and teasing.

MSI Wind U120 under Test: Better Design, Better Price, Less Battery life

10-in MSI Wind U120 is a revamped version of Wind U100 was listed in Europe few days ago and has been available for purchase in the US at Amazon and J&R for $450. Now, a review of this laptop can give a good image of it and make the decision easier for the consumers who have not decided to purchase one of either 10-inch Samsung NC10 or 10.1-in HP Mini 2140 or 10-in Wind U120. This Wind U120 is in some cases some better than the other ones and in some cases the other two ones are better. For example, It has the same size and weight of Samsung NC10, despite Wind‘s small touchpad is yet bigger than the one found on Samsung NC10. However, Wind’s touchpad doesn’t support multitouch gestures like Samsung NC10’s, or it has slower transferring rate than Nc10. or HP Mini 2140’s keyboard is slightly more comfortable that Wind U120’s famous keyboard for typist. Or the battery life of U120 is much shorter than the battery life on NC10 and Mini 2140 that lasts up to 6 hours each (according to laptop magazine).

Folk in Laptop Magazine had their hands-on Wind U120 with the price tag of $379 and reviewed this netbook in full details. They have also run some test and recorded the benchmark results. Here I am just mentioning a rundown of this review with benchmark results. But I recommend you to read the full review if you want to know about the details.

Wind U120 Feature set:

CPU: 1.6-GHz Intel Atom N270

Memory: 1GB of RAM/ max 1GB

Hard Drive: 160GB SATA (5,400 rpm)

Display: 10 inches matte LED backlight screen with 1024 x 600 resolution

Ports/slot: three USB ports and VGA, Ethernet, headphone, and microphone jacks, 4-in-1 card reader

Network: 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 2.0,

Weight: 2.8 pounds

Battery: 6-cell battery lasting 4 hours and half

OS: MS Windows XP Home

(Pros):

-Sleeker and more business design

-Comfortable keyboard

- Matte screen with bright and good viewing angle without noticeable glare

- Loud speakers (but lacking bass)

- EasyFace Manager Software enables facial recognition (log in with face instead of using password)

-Good wireless performance (better and higher than the netbook average)

-competitive bargain price

- Mobile broadband and WiMAX connectivity options coming later

(Cons):

-Stiff mouse buttons and small touchpad

-Mediocre battery life

-Limited tech support hours

-Not upgrade friendly (RAM is not upgraded to 2GB and there is no way to access the laptop’s guts)

- It gets warm

Benchmark results:

-Boot up time: 50 sec (7 sec faster than the category average)

-LAPTOP Transfer Test: 5 minutes and 6 seconds with a rate of 16.6 MBps for transferring 4.97GB of mixed media files

-3DMark03: 682

- Laptop battery test: 4 hours and 28 minutes

Conclusion:

MSI wind U120 is a serious rival for Samsung NC10 and HP Mini 2140. But now the question is “will U120 be more successful than these two other netbooks?” As the review says NC10 with starting price of $440 and Mini 2140 with the starting price of $500 are some better than U120.

For the consumers who just need a netbook with bargain price first and then coming with nice feature set like 10-inch display, comfortable keyboard and delivering the performance close to the category average, Wind U120 can be the best choice of all.

No doubt that Samsung NC10 comes with more fashionable design; so, the consumers who are more sensitive and are ready to pay some more, they will surely purchase a slightly better netbook with more fashionable design and feature set like Samsung NC10.

HP mini 2140 comes with trendy sturdy eye-catching aluminum chassis but it is more expensive than most of netbooks in the market. Thus, HP Mini 2140 can bring more satisfaction with chic design and long battery life for strict users.